Sympathy Lost, Cynicism Regained

VALERY LAMEIGNERE | FRANCE

A MONTH BEFORE.

I had known better years, to say the least, but 2001 was about to finally end. And with it, I hoped, an impressive succession of personal catastrophes. The time for New Year's resolutions was only a few months away, and smoking a Cuban cigar on a roof garden with a view of the twin towers, I was already thinking of calling for old-fashioned concepts. Peace, love and all that. I started to play a game with soothing properties, tightening an imaginary cable between the solid landmarks and admiring through the cigar smoke the audacity and good fortune of my fellow countryman, tightrope walker Philippe Petit, repeating his 1974 exploit. No drama.

My garden in the sky was the only place that survived the fire that had destroyed our apartment a few months before. It was not in its best shape, but was still full of life. When I look today at the picture my wife took from the roof on the morning of September 11, the contrast between the colorful vegetation and the towers burning in the background simply cuts my breath.

SEPTEMBER 11.

I was in Paris when I saw that incomprehensible image. On the TV screen, a plane was repeatedly hitting one of the towers. Philippe Petit had lost his balance and the world along with him. I immediately called my wife. Infiltrating through the apartment's windows I could hear the familiar New York sirens blare, at this point merely stating for her that she was living in the most exciting city in the world. As she reached the rooftop holding a wireless phone, her scream traveled all the way to the heart of Paris. It was now official; she and the entire American nation had entered adulthood.

Prolonging that scream came a string of calls from people I would have never suspected cared this much. Everyone wanted news of her, of me, of New York City. A similar compassion soon started flooding into the streets, the cafés, spreading throughout radios, papers and TV. Was France just waiting for an occasion like this to reveal its most intimate feelings toward the United States? To say we love you in spite of all the misunderstandings and ingrained clichés?

By the evening, the headlines in Le Monde (the most influential French paper, at times critical of American culture and policy), read: "Nous sommes tous Américains!" ("We are all Americans!") Here was the proof: The French really are those sentimental people described in airport novels rather than the rude stinky brutes filling the accounts of horrified tourists. Very old men, eyes moist with tears and wearing sparkling medals, started waving blue, white and red bouquets (a fondue of Stars, Stripes and the French flag) before TV cameras; sand and foam from the Normandy beaches was now covering television screens. No, the French people have not forgotten. They never will.

In fact, beyond France, a great number of European intellectuals found in this tragedy a unique occasion to make their coming out as lovers of America. Like those British white-collar workers hiding garter belts under strict Savile Row suits, could it be that their contempt for America was only a façade covering not only the already suspected fascination, but a real, deep and tender affection for the New World? Shell-shocked and unbalanced, Europe revealed its undies. Vulnerable at last, America was lovable. Or, to be more precise, it was now possible to admit it.

A MONTH LATER.

I found myself on ground zero holding coffee cups on a cardboard tray. The hellish site was not a tourist attraction then, and you had at the very least to be chaperoned by a woman who, as a true New Yorker, fell in love with a fireman on the night of September 11. That indeed was the case, and the coffee cups were a sort of stage prop replacing the required pass.

On October 11, the lovable vulnerability of the United States had already turned into a less likable form of weakness: the kind that drives parents lacking natural authority to open the slap box. Except that instead of slaps, bombs were now dropping. "What can you expect from a President who believes in the death penalty, except mistaking justice with revenge?" murmured the same Europeans who just weeks before had claimed that they were all Americans.

My wife didn't feel comfortable visiting ground zero, perhaps because she had seen the tragedy without the filter of a TV screen. She said something about voyeurism and I told her I just wanted to wipe that growing smirk off my European face. So here I was with the New Yorker-in-love and my cardboard tray, passing looks from another world and meeting with polite refusals for the coffee. Those men looked scared, traumatized and beyond tired, far more human than the statues of superheroes built by the media and the government.

There is not much I can add here to the numerous descriptions made of the remains of the World Trade Center. I walked in a daze through this melted universe, incredulous and upset, afraid of breathing that smell I had heard about. When we arrived on the site, the atmosphere was quite tense as new bodies had just been found. The huge iron girders in a shape of a cross, the smoke still coming out from the innards of the collapsed towers, the surrounding buildings wrapped in plastic like a work of Christo, the fire engine reduced to the size of a toy. I am sure they have been photographed a thousand times. But one knows nothing of an event before experiencing it in its flesh, if only in infinitesimal doses. Coffees were now cold; I felt misplaced. I had finally breathed in that morbid smell. Bye-bye smirk.

A YEAR LATER.

Global warmth for the United States has definitely turned to frost. Compassion for September 11's victims remains unaltered, but the image of America is severely tarnished abroad. George W. Bush's America is accused of political cynicism: The U.S. government is seen as exploiting the tragedy to heighten patriotism and declare absurd wars as a way to increase its popularity in opinion polls. The wounded country is also said to be guilty of using the world's sympathy as an excuse for a unilateral foreign policy. But the main grievance probably comes from America's partiality regarding the Israel-Palestine issue. America doesn't listen anymore, not even to its allies. Words like "arrogance" and "incompetence" are replacing last year's declarations of love. A historical opportunity to be appreciated worldwide has been missed.

In Europe, the peculiar embarrassment of having shown too much personal emotion to America only to receive a cynical grin in reply gives the criticism an even more merciless tinge. The European solidarity with America's distress was not a diplomatic response. It was a spontaneous impulse containing a proposal for the future: May this tragedy be a chance for our people to get closer. Arrogance was not the expected answer.